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The Observer restaurant critic shares a food memory of his mum, TV agony aunt Claire Rayner.
Citydweller Ben tells us what London restaurants are worthy of a visit, and why he started to blog...
Having lived on both sides of the pond, Krista, an American living in London, purports on the differences between the Brits' and Yanks' dining (and drinking, ahem) habits, and applauds the local fare that cured her homesickness.
Bordering on obsessive where food is concerned, Rebecca lives and breathes the Real Food Festival she works for. She has managed to not step foot into a supermarket for over two years. Here, she talks about the Slow Food movement.
The festival season is upon us and, according to Andrew Harrison, it’s worth going for the food as much as the music...
Gino from Morelli's talks Italian – flavours, that is – and how the gelato emporium grew from a bicycle to a Harrods' parlour.
Food for thought: Masterchef finalist Emily Ludolf
We're so impressed with the 18-year-old Masterchef finalist, Emily Ludolf, that we asked her for the sweet and lowdown on what it was like competing on TV's toughest cookery show.
You
have a fan base here at delicious. and we're certain our readers agree.
You're only 18, yet you held your own against two older male
contestants and continually produced inventive dishes that belied your
age. How long have you been cooking for? When I was
little my favourite toy was my early learning kitchen, I would serve up
delicious meals of plastic food to all my friends and family, which I
was assured (despite the fact that they were inedible) were amazing! I
would announce to my mum that when I grew up I wanted to be a ‘cooker,’
to which she would reply “Gas or electric?” But as I got older my
ambition to be a chef was supplanted by other interests and I only
really returned to cooking about a year ago.What compelled you to apply for Masterchef, knowing you'd be younger than most entrants? I just thought, “Why not?” I’m the kind of person who loves to be challenged and to try new things and I knew that Masterchef
would be able to supply both of those things in bucket loads! I was at
home after an ordinary day at school and the allure of the call to
apply for the next series, which flashed up on the television screen
after the show, was just too appealing.Who's your inspiration? A family member? A celebrity chef? Honestly,
my greatest inspiration is my own imagination. My muse is evoked by a
variety of things from ideas, sensations, emotions and just trying to
toy with people’s preconceptions of food. The thing that I love most
about cooking is the creative process of playing with flavour
combinations, interpretations and processes; the conceptualizing of a
dish. So, where do you get your inspiration for flavour combinations from? Do they just pop into your head?People
are often astounded when I tell them that flavour combinations do just
pop into my head! I can go to bed at night, and without any conscious
thought, wake up the next morning with the seed of an idea for a new
recipe. But at the same time, I love to take existing flavour
combinations and messing around with them a little. It actually
sometimes has quite an unnerving effect on people when they cannot
recognise the ingredients they are eating until they taste them, but
the sense of surprise that it evokes is worth it.We'd
love a bit of insider info: was it as high pressure as it looked on
Masterchef? How much time did you get to come up with each menu? No
re-takes. No preparation time. Nothing contrived or set up. We were
literally told we would be flying to Belize the evening before and not
only were we not told where or what the challenge would be but also
what ingredients we would have to work with. It’s a totally
overwhelming experience being confronted with a table of food and
having just minutes to figure out how to cook it; especially when such
a high standard is expected of you. They say on the show, “cooking
doesn’t get tougher than this!" and even though it sounds gimmicky it
is actually the truth; how many chefs have had to cook on a fire in the
jungle? What were the high points about working on the show? The
Masterchef finals were filmed over a month in the summer. It was a
month of 22 hour days, at least five days a week, of existing in a
constant state of limbo, never knowing what would happen next. It was
amazing! I experienced so many things that I had never dreamed
that I would ever have the opportunity to experience. I’d been halfway
across the world, cooked in some of the most opulent places for some of
the greatest chefs in England and every step along the way been able to
create some dishes that I thought were totally beyond my skills. By the
end of the filming I felt like I had lived an entire lifetime in just
four weeks. Did you pick up any cooking tips that you can share with us? My
advice would be to always use the freshest ingredients and always make
sure that, whatever you do to the ingredient during cooking, it doesn’t
lose its flavour. Pierre Gagnaire
(a renowned French chef) was very empathetic on that point; for him
cooking was all about complimenting and extracting the flavour of the
raw ingredient.Come on Emily, dish the dirt – what were John Torode and Gregg Wallace really like? Next time you watch John and Gregg
on TV take the remote control and turn down the volume a little, just a
little. That’s what John and Greg are like in real life. They are huge
personalities with great, although quite different, senses of humour
but most of the time they don’t shout at each other (honestly!)Their
real contribution to the show isn’t just their expressive reaction to
the plate in front of them, but how knowledgeable they are about food.
The advice and help that they gave us all along the way meant that our
own knowledge and what we were achieving was constantly improving. Tactfully put! How did you get on with the other contestants? I
was so incredibly lucky to be in the finals with James and Jonny. I
couldn’t have asked for two more supportive and interesting guys.
Whenever I was completely overwhelmed by the task in front of me I knew
that I could rely on the two guys to see me through. We all
complimented each other really well and by the end of the filming we
had formed a fully functioning unit; James would whizz through a
hundred different complex processes at once and Jonny would be hacking
away with gusto at huge chuck of meats that he would render down to
succulent delicacies, while I wondered around making a mess (that
super-efficient James would clean up) and suggesting random things that
we could add or tweak or change. What are you doing now? Right
now I am reading English at university, and trying to come to terms
with the amazingly huge response that has come out of Masterchef. I
still can’t quite believe how much people really felt inspired by my
cooking and took my blunders to heart. I’m not sure what I’m going to
do next, but I’m sure that after having such a food epiphany that it
will be cooking related. What would you like to do with the skills you learned on the show? One
of the most important things that I learnt from the show is that I’m
never going to survive working seven days a week in a professional
kitchen! But I have picked up so many skills and knowledge from doing
the show that there’s no way that I could let that go to waste, I
definitely want to do something with food. What are your long-term ambitions? My
long-term ambitions, as far as they’ve been formed, is to write about
food and introduce cooking to everyone (even lazy teenagers and
students) by advocating having fun with cooking; playing with your food
should lose its stigma! Eventually, I want to travel the world in
search of new ingredients, cooking processes and discover the diverse
cultural nuances of food and then take all that I’ve learnt to create a
restaurant that re-defines the dining experience. So not much really
(!) but first I’m planning on enjoying university and all it has to
offer. Fancy yourself as the next Masterchef? Click here to apply.